


Someday You Will Die (love of mine)

by Enby_Tiefling



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Keyleth-centric (Critical Role), Post-Series, Romance, background Vox Machina, it's loving keyleth hours lads you know what that means
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23196808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enby_Tiefling/pseuds/Enby_Tiefling
Summary: The Voice of the Tempest is ageless and ancient. The woman who bears the name sits tall, even wrinkled and grey. Her eyes are closed, her face turned up into the sunlight.-Keyleth was always going to be the last one left.
Relationships: Keyleth/Vax'ildan (Critical Role)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 95





	Someday You Will Die (love of mine)

Atop the highest cliff of Zephra there is a house, and outside that house there is a tree. Within that tree there is sunlight and a single black feather. From its branches, broad green leaves filter sunlight and shift gently in the breeze. It's heart is stained black with death, but it thrives. 

Under that tree there is a bench. It was carved ages ago by steady workman's hands, a gift. There are many gifts scattered around the bench and tree and house. Charms and chains hang from branches, notes are folded and pressed into the roots, ribbons and chimes catch the wind and make music. 

On the bench there is a Tempest. 

The Voice is ageless and ancient, more a title than a person. The woman who bears the name sits tall, even wrinkled and grey. Her eyes are closed, her face turned up into the sunlight. 

Below, she hears the children shriek with laughter, their footsteps pounding across grass and packed earth as they chase each other around the village. She cracks one eye open and watches, her lips curling into a smile that makes her look centuries younger. 

She is joined on the bench. People often come to her to speak, or listen, or just to sit. This is a good spot for thinking. 

"Zephra has grown."

She nods, looking out over the sprawling lands of her people. The mountains are shielded by the turbulent winds but their home is a haven, disturbed only by gentle breezes and light rainfall. She remembers building houses and tilling soil, expanding past the borders of her distant youth. Her people live across three peaks, now. 

Her companion seems sorrowful - mourning, perhaps? She has experience with that. She reaches without looking, still focused on the horizon, and lays her hand over his. Her skin is dry and wrinkled, the fine bones of her wrist prominent and her knuckles beginning to swell and ache with arthritis. It's only about four hundred years coming. 

"We are the gardeners," she says. "And the world is wild, untamed. That's good, until it starts to consume itself. We are the wardens."

She gives this speech at weddings and funerals - has whispered it to every child born to the royal line of Whitestone and sung it to the children of bards and clerics. She means it every time. 

"It must be tiring," her companion says, turning his hand under hers and twining their fingers together. "Being in charge of all that."

She looks up, up, into the canopy of the tree. 

"I haven't been alone," she says with a smile. She squeezes his hand, studying him out of the corner of her eye. 

Her companion is young, and handsome, and so terribly sad. His hair is long and dark, his features fine and his eyes bright. Bright beads and a single blue feather are braided behind his ear. 

She's been an auntie and a grandmother and a several-times-great of each of those, so it is second nature to cup his cheek and tisk over the shadows under his eyes. 

"And who looks after you?" She asks, watching his expression crumble. His other hand comes up to cover hers. Her presses a kiss to her palm, reverent, and does not answer. 

She looks over her shoulder, back towards her home. Her people, her children - all of them, who she saw come into this world and welcomed to this tribe, who she watched grow and learn and bloom. 

"You should always have a place to set down roots," she tells him. She untangles their hands and stands, leaning on her staff. She presses a hand to the black core of the tree, letting it's chill seep into her bones.

The Voice of the Tempest begins the slow walk back into her cottage, shuffling across the stone path. She stretches out a hand at her side and coaxes flowers into bloom as she passes, a week early but eager for the brush of her power. Her companion joins her, laughing quietly when she bats his hands away when he tries to help support her. Inside, she sends a spark to rest beneath the kettle with a thought. 

Metal and wooden wind chimes clatter in all the open windows. Her walls are covered in artwork and shelves that are in turn stuffed with books and trinkets. The silver clock keeps a steady rhythm, the clicking of gears a soothing white noise after all this time. 

Her guest is hesitant to enter, wide-eyed at her collection. It is decades, centuries in the making. 

"You've done so much," he whispers. She can't help but laugh. 

"Look around," she invites. "Stories are meant to be shared."

She makes tea, a sweet berry and herb blend that eases the perpetual dryness of her throat. She stifles a cough as she breathes in the steam. 

Her guest runs his fingers along the spines of the books, leather and canvas and clumsily-stitched pages arranged in no particular order, lingering over the occasional stamp of Ioun's mark on the bindings. He studies the clock, and the mechanical odds and ends around it. An arrow fletched with owlbear feathers makes him gasp, his hands shaking as he picks it up gently. He flips silver coin that still shimmers with the lingering imprint of an enchantment. One of her collection of holy symbols, gifts from friends and travellers to remind her of her place in creation among the great powers, makes him pause and close his eyes, head bowing for a moment before he moves on. 

" _You're_ the record-keeper," he says quietly, in awe. He winds a music box and chokes at the first few notes. "You've kept them all here."

She sets two steaming cups on her table, easing herself into a chair. When he joins her, she doesn't protest him capturing her hand in his again. 

He's young, bright-eyed and battle-ready. She's seen his face a thousand times, eager and unbroken. She's healed the scars that would mar his skin, sunk her magic into the bones of countless travellers over the years. There's several lifetimes worth of joy in healing. 

"Tell me why you've come," she invites. "Tell me what you need."

There's fragility to him - to everyone she meets, so vulnerable to the passage of time. It's a weakness she's long grown unaccustomed to, holding strong against the ages, wearing away only slowly like a stone against the tide or the winds that carved these cliffs. 

"I needed to see you," he says. She hums and nods. Her tea steams and cools in front of her, forgotten. "I hated the thought of you being alone."

She smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners, the lines of her face well-worn for this. She pats his hand and tilts her head. 

"I've never been alone," she assures him. 

"But they're all gone, except for you."

"Even so." A breeze stirs the wind chimes. "I know their names and faces, and all the names and faces that came after them, and everyone after that. I tell their stories - I was never as good at it, but he taught me a few tricks along the way - and the world remembers with me."

She's polite enough to not mention the tears on his face. He hasn't noticed them yet, staring at her in awe. 

Her head moves, face tilting into the sunlight through the windows. She sighs, somewhat put out. 

"I miss the sky," she says mournfully. She's been too unsteady to fly for... A while now. 

"Then let's go," he says, standing and pulling her to her feet. She doesn't object to his hand on the small of her back. He walks them both eagerly back out the door. "I'll take you. I've missed it too."

A rush of giddiness swells in her chest. She feels eons younger - like she's twenty-four again and the world is brand new, power thrumming under her skin that she's still learning to wield and an unknown future ahead. It lends her speed and balance like she hasn't had in years, her steps sure even without her staff, which she leaves on the bench under the tree as they pass it. 

They stand side by side, their toes hanging over the edge of the cliff. Tall grass and wildflowers bat their ankles as the wind kicks up. The sun is bright, the sky cloudless and impossibly blue. 

He twines his fingers with hers and she laughs at the impatient way he bucks his head, hair blowing behind him. She catches his face with her free hand, soft and nimble again, and kisses him. 

She's missed him so much. 

His hand cards through her hair, the red glowing copper and gold in the sunlight, and presses their foreheads together. 

"One last adventure?" He asks, young and breathless. 

"With you?" She asks with a laugh. "Always."

He spreads his wings, and he takes her flying. 


End file.
